Friday, January 14, 2011

The cats are helping me sort out my cupboards..

and not in a good way.

My fluffy orange cat, Torgen, has always had issues of some sort. Some years ago when I adopted a big dog he was petrified and started hiding in odd and sometimes dangerous places. For instance he spent a whole day in the wood storage hole of a built in braai (barbecue) of a house we were renting. Another time he was found huddling on top of the support pillar of the precast fence in the middle of rolls of security razor wire. He would never come home on his own but would always have to be searched for and extricated. He can go for a while without any odd behaviour but something else eventually surfaces.

His latest thing is to not use the cat litter box for urinating or even go outside. He just holds his pee in until he starts peeing just wherever he is or he sprints to my bedroom and jumps in my cupboard and starts peeing there.

So this is how he is 'helping' me in my cleaning venture. I have had to clean one shelf FULL of items that were stored in there. He had been hiding and sleeping on a pile of stationery and just peeing in there as and when required. I had to eventually clean out and move everything from there and just toss out all the stationery which was obviously ruined by the urine. I have to make an effort to remember to close this cupboard. Dael's clothes are stored on one long shelf of this cupboard and he always leaves the doors open.

This morning, I had barely got up and ventured out my room when Torgen raced past me at high speed and leapt into his new cupboard. This section has been storing all Bradley's old toys, army men, some books, etc. An ideal hideaway spot for a troubled cat. As I peered into the cupboard, Torgen was urinating a steady stream of pee into the box of toys. I saw red and knew that some immediate action was required (at just after 5am).

With the cat still in the cupboard, crouching in the back, I fetched a black garbage bag which I placed on the floor and started pulling out the damaged contents of the cupboard onto the black bag. Eventually the nervous cat got the idea and leapt out of the cupboard and zoomed through the cat hole in the french doors and outside, which is where he should have gone in the first place! Once everything was out I could see that he has been peeing in there for a while and the urine has soaked through to the chipboard on the bottom of the cupboard which fortunately Dael says can be removed without causing the main cupboard to fall down. In the meantime I have just sprayed that area liberally with my Bleach and water mixture to at least sanitize it a bit so my room doesn't continue to stink of pee.

Now the next thing is to go through all the toys that I removed from the cupboard and throw them into a bucket of bleach water to clean them. Then they will have to be dried and stored in a bag probably in one of my top cupboards.

See how my cats help me to get to my tasks that I have been procrastinating about doing. They so helpful to their mom. :)

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